Sonoma County, CA * (415) 779-4914 * Irwin@irwinkeller.com
An improvisation to help you move from the jagged week into some spacious, giddy Shabbat consciousness. Melody by Shlomo Carlebach. Guitar played by Susie Miller. Singing by everyone at Congregation Ner Shalom last Friday, March 17, 2017.
Shabbat Shalom.
Now beware. There are risks associated with stirring the waters, as any activist knows. The thing is, when you stir the waters, the waters get stirred. There are ripples; and the consequences can be unpredictable. Other activists might be stirred up or stirring up in different ways, and the hulls of your ships might bang up against each other – the hulls of your friendships, your partnerships, colliding. This happens. And so it is important to remember that someone stirring the water differently is not necessarily your enemy. And that there is room on these waves for all of us to ride.
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So how do you create monumental Iron Age architecture without axes, hammers or iron tools? Yes, it could just mean that the milling happened at the quarry, many miles away where the ringing and clanging would not bother anybody. But that's too easy an answer for us Jews. Instead, our midrash, our vast array of legend, goes wild here. How did whole stones come to be so regular and perfectly shaped if iron chisels were forbidden? How were they transported if iron crowbars couldn't pry them onto wagons? One midrash suggests that the stones, once uncovered in the quarry, perfectly shaped, would hoist themselves up in the air and levitate to Jerusalem.
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We are living in dark times. I know this because people are saying it to me all the time. We are living in dark times. We reach for that metaphor because we are frightened and we need big language. "Dark times" has a pageantry, an epicness to it. Yes, children, gather round and Grandpa Irwin will tell you about the Dark Times.
This story, this exodus story, is our master story for this moment. We know it well. We retell it every year. We have digested it along with so much parsley and saltwater. It is in our cells. We know it starts with enslavement. And we know it ends with freedom.
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